Decreasing the Resistance of the Human Resources to Organizational Changes

One of the most difficult problems faced by the management of all organizations within innovation and change processes is the resistance to change. This study, dealing with this issue, has the following main objectives: to identify the main sources of resistance to change, to outline the directions for reducing chang’s resistance, to design essentially managerial approaches in order to counter the resistance to change. The first part presents the 14 most frequent and most important sources of resistance to change, with a brief explanation of its content. It continues with the formulation of five key strands to reduce resistance to change. In the second part of the study, six major management approaches that can substantially reduce the resistance to change in organizations are established: shaping organizational culture, designing a strategy favouring organizational change, performing a management system open to change, achieving an intense and multilateral communication with all employees and key stakeholders, focusing on the coaching of staff towards change, developing consistent relationships with stakeholders, both internal and external. The last part of the paper deals with the first managerial approach to counter managerial resistance to change, shaping organizational culture, in a contextual view.